Page 47 of A Duchess for the Mysterious Duke
Marina thought back to the many times her husband had gone on some obscure errand or other outside of the home and of her suspicions that this was going on. Still, she clung to her last thread of loyalty and hope for him—surely a man who had looked at her as he had in his study just a while before could not betray her in such a way? Surely, she had not been mistaken and the glimmer of affection she had noticed was real.
“Murmurs are just that, are they not?” she quipped. “I would know it if my husband had betrayed our marriage so early.There are more friends of mine in the ton than there are of his. Someone would have told me.”
“It would be nice to think such, I know, but you are a duchess, now. Your status is elevated. People cannot hold you in the same regard as they once did, and they now fear your power. If you do not believe me, surely you are not a stranger to trusting your own intuition. Have you yourself not wondered where his hat has been while he has not been at home?”
“Well, yes, but?—”
“I can see the work that you have put into the estate, Your Grace. I know that if your husband was home attending to you, there would not be enough hours in the day to make such quick progress. Am I wrong?”
Marina thought for a moment, her hands clutching the edges of her chair so tightly that her knuckles were turning white. “And have you borne witness to this that you accuse Phillip of?”
“I have.”
Marina swallowed the lump in her throat, unsure if she could hear any more, but Emmanuel was determined to continue. It was as if there would be no end to Phillip’s betrayal.
“There are conflicts with the estate as well. Phillip needed to marry you to secure your sizable dowry which your father boasted of loudly at my ball the night he met my nephew. Asyou know, he has squandered his years abroad on women and gambling houses, and his father left little to live on during his decade of illness. It was pertinent that Phillip secured the funds to hide his secret.”
“Secret?”
Emmanuel hung his head as if in shame. “Of course. I thought…I was mistaken. I would have thought that he at least made you aware of his circumstance as it affects you directly.”
“Pray tell, My Lord. The circumstance.”
“Phillip is a bastard. He is not the rightful heir to the title of duke.”
Marina felt as though she were overwhelmed with emotion following this conversation, and she hardly registered the sound of boots running through the garden toward them before she felt hands on her shoulder, holding her up.
“What is the meaning of this?” Phillip demanded, his eyes narrowed dangerously on his uncle. “What could you have said to her to leave her in this condition?”
Phillip turned his attention to Marina, searching her eyes carefully, but she was unable to look at him. “Marina, I—” He stopped himself as her eyes swiveled toward him and he saw the pain in them. He turned back to Emmanuel. “I demand to know what you’ve told her this instant,” he thundered.
Phillip’s uncle kept walking in the garden. “The truth, Phillip. I told her the truth of your parentage. She is your wife, and she deserved to know what she was up against.”
Phillip’s eyes, still trained on Marina, went wide, and his face drained of all color. His worst nightmare had come to fruition. His wife met his gaze, tears now streaming down her face.
“Tell me that none of it is true, Phillip,” she begged of him quietly. Her heart is so full of pain that she cannot even bring herself to think of the scene that she is causing now in front of Phillip’s uncle.
“Marina, I…” Phillip’s voice trailed off, and he gave her an impassioned look. He had no idea how to tell her that he needed her to trust that he still had her best interests at heart. That he lied to protect her. His look was a desperate attempt to get her to understand while he was unable to speak.
“Is ittrue, Phillip?” she begged again, her voice growing shrill. “Everything he’s said, is it the truth? What of your ‘cousin’, Emma? Did you not stop to think that I might one day meet the young woman your uncle is sponsoring and learn the truth of her relation to you? Or lack thereof.”
The Duke stood, looking away from her because he could not bear to see her face when he answered. Up until that moment, his decision to keep Marina in the dark about his status had felt the right thing to do. But now his guilt was eating him alive from the inside out—he had been wrong to think that she could not handle the truth.
That they could not handle it together.
Marina, evidently, took Phillip’s silence to mean that Emmanuel had told her the truth.
Phillip looked at her and was shocked by the venom in her gaze. She turned and made for their home. He followed after her.
“Marina, no! I beg of you—come back and I will tell you everything. I was mistaken before. I?—”
She stopped, her back still to him, and startled him into silence. He watched helplessly as she clenched her fists. Her voice was still heavy with sadness and shaky from tears he was sure were still streaming down her pretty cheeks. “As was I. I was mistaken. It is unfathomable to me that I ever entertained shallow feelings for such a man as you, Phillip Hayward.”
CHAPTER 34
The sting of Marina’s words tore him down and held him in his place as she disappeared inside the house, surely, he thought, to call a carriage. A rage built in him like a bonfire—his marriage had been in a precarious enough position without this interference. The Duke turned and made his way back to his uncle, who was singing, as if he had not just destroyed a union in a single afternoon.
“What reason could you possibly have had to do something like this, Uncle?” Phillip demanded, looming over Emmanuel Hayward’s seated form. He gripped the back of the chair Marina had just occupied with tense fingers. “Tell me,” he insisted, his powerful voice growing in volume and earnest.
